by Celia Roman
“You wanna talk about it?” What was I saying? ‘Course, he wanted to talk about it, else he wouldn’t be slumped on the foot of my bed looking like he done lost his best friend. “He say why he was a-leaving you?”
David’s breathy laughter held not one whit of humor. “To spare me. Can you believe it? After everything we’ve been through, he thinks he can keep me from being hurt by leaving me.”
“He loves you.”
“So he’s leaving me?”
“Love don’t always make sense.” Look at me and Riley. What made sense about that? But we was hanging in there, wasn’t we, and at the very least, we got our friendship to fall back on. “He don’t want the deal he made with the rest of the Greenwood Five to touch you.”
The half-questioning note in my voice weren’t intended to be there, but once the words was out, I couldn’t take ‘em back.
David took ‘em at face value, bless him. “He told you that?”
“I guessed.”
“It’s a shitty excuse,” David said flatly, and I kindly had to agree. Leaving a man like David, one what loved you to the moon and back, was pure plum foolishness, you asked me. A love like that only come along ever once in a while, and once ‘twas gone, weren’t no getting it back.
On the other hand, I understood what it was like to be on the wrong end of a scandal. A body in that position wanted to protect their loved ones best they could, even if it meant leaving ‘em high and dry.
I pressed my lips together and slipped back into the bathroom, washed my face and brushed my teeth right proper, and come back out feeling like a decent human being. “You gonna talk him ‘round?”
“I tried. He kicked me out of our apartment. Said he’d let me know when he found a place of his own.” David’s head dropped down. He scrubbed a hand over his nape, then let it fall lifeless into his lap. “What am I going to do?”
I sat down beside him and leaned my head against his shoulder. Strong David with his nimble hands and wide open heart. He been there for me when I needed him. What little could I do to pay back that gift?
“Don’t give up,” I said at last.
“What choice do I have?”
His voice strained thin on the last note and near about broke. I wrapped an arm around his waist and held on under the firm certainty that one day soon, he’d be comforting me the same way.
David left soon as Riley banged on the door and come in, his scowl a mite softer’n usual. I reckoned he knowed something was wrong with David and decided to save his macho possessive routine for a day when David weren’t so dadgum vulnerable.
Me and Riley trotted off to the doctor’s office, then spent an hour past the appointment time in the waiting room, chitchatting and reading out of date magazines.
Which, if they was gonna schedule a body for a certain time, why didn’t they just stick to it?
I was politic enough not to say nothing, but it sure did get my panties in a twist sometimes, ‘specially since the doctor was too busy to see me. Once I was ushered to an examination room, some young woman come in looking barely old enough to drive and introduced herself in a perky tone as the doctor’s assistant. I forgot her name just as quick, then sat through her humming and ohing while she checked my blood pressure and heart rate and asked me a bunch of silly questions about how I felt.
I felt fine, had since the day after Old Mother’s visit. I drawed a deep breath to say so, and Riley interrupted me.
“She’s almost one hundred percent.” He rubbed a finger over his lower lip, hiding a smile. “Her mood’s back to normal, too.”
I squinted at him in the too bright fluorescent light. Dang his hide. He was getting to know me a mite too well, weren’t he? And since I was getting so predictable, maybe it was time I shook things up a bit.
The doctor substitute cleared me after a stern warning about coming back the minute I exhibited any similar problems. I ignored her. Weren’t hard, seeing as how her lecture was delivered in the same tone as a cheerleader talking to a kindergartner.
Since we was in town, Riley took me to lunch and cajoled me out of my cantankerous mood, and I let him, just ‘cause I could.
Besides. He was charming and sweet, and when we was done eating and on our way outta the restaurant, he kissed me right there in front of God and ever body, a nice, long, heartfelt smooch, leaving me addled as a schoolgirl.
My wits reassembled themselves about the time we turned off on Persimmon Road. “Dang it.”
Riley glanced over at me. “What?”
“I forgot Billy Kildare’s card at home.” I slid a side-eyed glance at him. “And you got my car keys, so I can’t deliver it on my own.”
“They’re in the glovebox.”
“Why you…” I let my words trail off and fished my keys outta the console. “I’m gonna remember where you hid ‘em for next time.”
“I moved them around every day.” He downshifted and steered around a curve, then dropped a casual hand onto my thigh. “By any chance does Dori still make the best pound cake in the county?”
“She do.”
“I’ll tag along, then.”
“Riley Treadwell,” I said, mock severe. “Dori Kildare is married.”
He grinned and squeezed my leg, not the least bit contrite by the looks of him, and I laughed and rested my hand on his, and all was right with the world.
Half an hour later, sorrow card retrieved from my desk, we pulled into the Kildare’s driveway and parked. Dori opened the front door before we reached it, looking polished and pressed as a model on the runway, and tried a half smile out on us. “Hey, Sunny. Riley. I wasn’t expecting company.”
I shook my head and jogged to a stop in front of her on the concrete porch. “I just wanted to drop a card off for Billy. How’s he doing?”
“He’s not taking Ol’ Blue’s loss well at all.” Her lower lip trembled and firmed, and her hand tightened into a white-knuckled grip on the doorknob. “I hear him crying at night when he thinks we’re asleep.”
A sharp pang twisted through my heart. Poor kid. It was tough to lose somebody you loved, ‘specially the way he loved that dog. “Anything I can do?”
“You’ve already done so much for him.” She sniffed and a tear slid down her face, and next thing I knowed, she launched herself at me and hugged me tight against her bosom. “I wish so much that Henry was still alive. I wish it every day, Sunny. He and Billy would’ve been the best of friends.”
I patted her back, at a loss what else to do. No telling what the future woulda brung if the deep wood hadn’t stole my boy, and no sense dwelling on what couldn’t be helped.
The card was still in my hand. It give me an excuse to ease back and put some distance between me and her. The way I was going, I’d be hugging the whole county by the end of the week, and not just the folks I knowed well.
I held out the card to her and tried not to squirm under all the touching. “Here. I got this for Billy. I know it ain’t no substitute for Ol’ Blue.”
“Sunny.” Dori sniffed through a laugh and tucked the card close to the pale pink button down shirt hanging just right across her trim chest. “Thank you.”
I glanced at Riley outta the corners of my eyes. “Woulda been here sooner if somebody hadn’t filched my car keys.”
“If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have rested,” he said.
Dori’s laughter faded to concern and the faintest of wrinkles appeared under her cornflower blue eyes. “I heard you were sick.”
“Pffft,” I scoffed. “Was just a touch of soreness.”
Weren’t gonna tell her the cause. The less folks outside of close kin knowed about my business, the better. For their own protection and peace of mind, if not for my own.
“It was the next thing to a heart attack,” Riley said, his tone a hair shy of patient. “Not to mention hypothermia.”
Dori gasped and her hands fluttered at her waist over the card’s edges. “What happened?”
I shot an exasper
ated glare at Riley. Now he done it. Word of Old Mother’s visit’d be all over Persimmon by nightfall.
“She passed out coming up her porch steps. Trey found her the next morning.”
Relief sagged outta me as Dori fussed over me. I tried to defray her concern. Me, I was healthy as an ox, but she went on and on, and wouldn’t hear of letting us leave without taking half a fresh cooked sour cream pound cake with us.
When we said our goodbyes, accompanied by promises to visit soon, Riley’s triumphant grin stretched his mouth nigh on ear to ear. I shook my head and got in his Range Rover, and vowed it’d be a long while yet before I made him another cake.
Chapter Sixteen
A letter from Mama was waiting on me in the mailbox when we got home. I shooed Riley back to work and plopped down on the couch to read it.
Dear baby girl, it said, and I sighed. No matter how old I got, Mama still thought of me as a kid.
I shook off the exasperation and continued reading.
Soon as I got your letter, I sat down with this one, and will pass it off to a guard to mail this very day. I hope it reaches you soon, as there are too many things you don’t know about your daddy’s family. Too many things your daddy would’ve told you, if he lived long enough.
I let that one pass without dwelling on it. No amount of wishing could undo the past.
Johnny ain’t a bad sort, but you best steer clear of your grandmother. Was her that kicked your daddy out of the Panther clan, after they split from the main branch in Qualla.
A sharp chill run down my spine and I let the letter fall into my lap. The Cherokee had seven different clans. Ever blood member belonged to one according to the clan they was born to through their mother or adopted to by a clan mother, if they was taken in. Some Cherokee families still practiced their traditional matrilineal customs. The wife was the head of the household and, as such, the one making the decisions, was my understanding.
Which explained a lot of what I heard about my grandparents.
The mention of the Panther clan concerned me most. Was it a coincidence that painters was haunting the deep wood and I was, by my father’s blood, descended from the Panther clan, though never a part of it?
Or was my imagination scaring up haints what wasn’t there?
I picked Mama’s letter up and continued reading.
Stay away from Betty Walkingstick, Sunshine. She never forgave your daddy for marrying me, nor me for luring him away from the Res. She’s bad news, baby, real bad. I don’t want you tangled up in all that. Next time Johnny comes around, you tell him to scat real quick, you hear?
Mama ended the letter there, signing it, “All my love.” I started at the first word and read it again, careful to take in ever nuance I could ferret out. When I was done, I tucked it away and slumped onto the couch, overwhelmed by the questions running rampant in my noggin.
Daddy was born to the Panther clan, like his mama before him.
Painters appeared in the deep wood and stalked humans.
An old legend implied the painter spirit could be absorbed by humans.
And a painter with human eyes died on Patterson Gap Road, starting the whole chain of events leading to this moment.
I didn’t know what to make of it, couldn’t fathom the possibility staring me in the face like a haint hovering in the air in front of me. If these separate instances was linked, if the painters in the deep wood was in some way related to the Cherokee Panther clan, not related in the blood sense, but somehow connected, did that mean the Panther clan was really shifters? Had they the nature of the beast and of humans both?
Old Mother’s words jumped into my head. She of two worlds. My grandmother? Or was that too literal an interpretation?
Above all, the question that bothered me the most was, why now? Whether they was two-natured or not, why was the painters making themselves seen when they was so scarce before?
I sat there stewing over ever thing ‘til the sun slid low on the horizon and Riley come back for Wednesday supper.
Soon as Riley walked in, I jolted into action and threw myself into whipping up a good meal for him. Now, some folks’d say I was acting the traditional role, but I saw it as doing for somebody what done for me. Kindly a tit for tat sorta thing, and I reckon Riley saw it about the same way when he grilled steaks for me.
Bless him, he really needed to learn how to fix something else.
I weren’t gonna complain, though. Gratitude prohibited a sour attitude, if friendship didn’t. Whatever he wanted to do for me was done with my blessing, long as he didn’t overstep none.
Besides. The questions roiling around in my noggin could be tucked away behind concentrating on something else, there still, sure, but not so much in the forefront of my mind.
Riley sat at the kitchen table and chatted with me about his day. The rivers was down, thanks to a lack of rain. He caught one of Harley Jimpson’s grand young’uns fishing on the Tallulah without a license. Had I heard about so-and-so having a baby?
I listened with half an ear, participating where I could, and by the time supper was ready to eat, my spirit had calmed a good deal. Riley had that way about him, always had. Even when we was too young to know what friends was, his laid back acceptance soothed me.
I dished up a plate for him of pork chops breaded and seasoned with rosemary and butter, fried taters topped by cornmeal gravy, and crowder peas from some I canned over the summer.
He sidled up next to me at the stove and rested a casual hand on my hip. “What’s the occasion?”
I handed him his plate and snagged an empty one for myself. “Why?”
“This is…” He breathed in real deep and exhaled loud. “Something else. I figured you’d give me the cold shoulder for hiding your keys.”
I mighta, if I’da thought about it. Too late now. I done cooked him supper.
I contemplated that for a good minute, then said, “Veteran’s Day was yesterday. We didn’t get to do nothing special, so.”
“Sunny.” His voice held a soft, tender note, almost like that night not so long ago when he told me he loved me. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me ‘til you taste it,” I said, and the tart tone spurred him into laughter.
Lordy, I loved doing for him.
I bit the thought off, only too aware of how fleeting relationships like ours was, and filled my plate, then sat down beside him at the sparkling new kitchen table and dug in.
Riley sliced off a piece of pork chop, chewed it real slow, and hmmed under his breath. “Damn, Sunny. That’s some good meat.”
“Thank you.”
I sliced off a piece of mine, got up, and slipped it into the bottom of the critter’s cage. He stared at it for a long minute, then glanced back up at me, looking for all the world like I inflicted a mortal wound.
“You haven’t been cheating on me have you?” Riley asked, and I whirled around, aghast at the suggestion.
“Why’d you ask such a thing?”
He waved his knife at the critter. “Looking up stuff behind my back.”
The fear clutching my middle eased, though my heart pattered and tripped in my chest. I patted a hand to it, willing it back to normal, and plopped back into my chair. “No, I have not, Riley Treadwell, and I can’t believe you’d accuse me of it neither.”
“You were here for a week without a thing to do,” he pointed out. “Boredom does funny things to a woman as active as you are.”
“If you was so concerned about it, you shouldn’ta made me sit on the couch like a warty ol’ lump.”
“Doctor’s orders.”
I hmphed, forked up some peas, and stuffed ‘em in my maw to keep it silent.
Riley tasted the taters and gravy, and his eyes about rolled back in his head. Soon as he swallowed, he said, “Make this for me every day and I’ll give you the sun and moon and every star in heaven.”
I snickered. Yeah, right. “You hear anything from Dean Whitaker about Ol’ Blue.”
&
nbsp; “Not a word. He’ll call when he knows something.”
“I’m just anxious, is all.” I fidgeted with my fork, pushed it through my taters. “Seeing Dori today, well. I reckon I was just hoping for some closure for her and Billy and them.”
“Be patient.”
“I am.”
He huffed out a laugh and set his knife to the pork chop on his plate. “What did your mom have to say?”
I winced. The letter. Hadn’t figured it out yet, and I weren’t sure I wanted Riley dragged through all that nohow. After a minute sorting through it, I said, careful like, “She said as how I should stay away from Daddy’s family. Bad news and such.”
Riley grunted. “You gonna listen to her?”
I clamped my mouth shut. That, I hadn’t decided on either, but there was one person out there what might could sort fact from fiction. Her, Mama hadn’t cautioned against. “I’m thinking on visiting Libby Squirrel.”
He glanced up at me, expression blank. “Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged against the warning crawling up my spine, the one what screamed something bad clung to my cousin. The one what said I should leave well enough alone. “What do you think?”
He sat there for a minute, just looking at me, never moving a muscle. At last, he said, “I think you’re going to do what you think is best, and damn what I have to say about it.”
His words stung hard, in the deepest part of me where I hated looking. I glanced down at my plate, fighting tears for some reason, and forced myself to stuff a bite sized piece of pork into my mouth. Chew, swallow, fork up another bite, but the flavor was more like cardboard than the savory meat I prepared special for Riley. Dull, tasteless, empty.
I placed my fork and knife on either side of my plate, precise and even. “I listen to you.”
“When it suits you.” He set his own utensils down and cupped a warm, calloused palm over my hand. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You got a right to say your piece.”
“Not when it hurts you.”
I shrugged a shoulder and glanced away, hiding what was going on in my heart. “Don’t worry about it.”